“The outcomes that happen in the grocery store, at the car dealership,” Smallwood said of the initiative that “for the first time ever that draws that elusive straight line from ad exposure to purchase.”

One overall takeaway from the data — which Smallwood said doesn’t identify consumers by name — is clear: Unless you’re dealing with a specific type of campaign (i.e. direct online sales) the answer isn’t direct response or clicks.

According to Smallwood, “99 percent of sales come from people who don’t interact with ads. They consume the message and then when they go to the store they purchase.”

“Reach is a crucial driver,” Smallwood! said. A nd digital campaigns that managed to find the proper reach were 70 percent more effective at driving purchases than ROI.

Smallwood said that marketers see a 40 percent increase in ROI by finding the “optimal frequency point.” He compared finding the frequency “sweet spot” in social to other platforms: “In TV you don’t want to send 50 impressions to one person, but you also don’t want to send one.”

Today’s high-resolution displays mean we don’t see pixelated images that often anymore. And let’s face it, once the colored pencil enters your life, you rarely pick up a crayon ever again. Except for nostalgia’s sake, which these pixelated crayons have in spades.

For $15 you get a set of six multi-colored crayons which can be used for drawing technicolor rainbows when dragged across a page. Or, if you happen to have a shred of artistic talent, these colored cacophonies can also be used to quickly add shading and depth to an image bound for the fridge door. Just move that important grocery list out of the way, your spose won’t mind.

Besides the elderly gentleman paying in nickels, the biggest holdup at supermarket checkouts is the cashier finding an item’s barcode and properly scanning. So Toshiba has developed a faster camera-based system that recognizes the food, packaged or fresh.

The system uses pattern recognition technology, so it can identify labels or packaging, as well as fresh items like fruits or vegetables that are typically lacking even barcodes. Mistakes are reduced since cashiers don’t need to punch in codes for fresh items, and the system is fast enough to recognize items even when they’re in motion.

Of course it still won’t stop the line from being held up as someone contests the ten cent yogurt coupon the store won’t accept, but it’s a step in the right direction of making grocery shopping easier to endure. [DigInfo via Ubergizmo]

Meanwhile, 61% chose “good value” over “low price” for any retail products their families may need, meaning a generic brand of bread may get passed over for a loaf of tastier (and possibly healthier) Pepperidge Farm bread.

“Value is not about price alone,” James Russo, vice president of Nielsen’s Global Consumer Insights, said in a statement. “Retailers and manufacturers who offer good values tailored around benefits of the product beyond price will resonate with consumers who continue to look for ways to stretch their money in a tough economy.”

The study found product preference also depends on where the respondents live, with those in Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America preferring good value over lower prices, and those living in Africa and the Middle East choosing price over value.

But just because North Americans prefer value over lower prices doesn’t mean that they’re willing to pay full price. In fact, Americans are among the world’s leading coupon-users, followed closely by China and Hong Kong.

We also buy in bulk more than anyone else in the world. According to Nielsen’s chart below, the main reason Americans visit the grocery store is to stock up, whereas a quick trip to replenish products is more popular in other parts of the world.

Beer is yet another commodity and category that is being decimated by better quality alternatives. The means of production and distribution are no longer controlled by a very small number of big companies. Consumers find attractive alternatives in micro-brew beers or local beers. They have the means to access them (online) and have the product shipped directly to their homes. So no matter how much advertising the big companies do, if their product is just not that great, they will continue to lose customers to alternatives. The “lime” version of Bud Light was said to cannibalize sales of regular Bud Light. And rightly so, consumers are looking for a better product.

Source: http://adage.com/article?article_id=138141

Despite a flurry of new and improved ad pushes for the country’s leading brews, the days leading up to Independence Day, usually the biggest-selling period of the year for the category, led to gruesome sales declines vs. the same period last year. Sales for Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light and Budweiser plunged 7% and 14%, respectively, in grocery, convenience and drug stores during the two-week period ending July 5, according to scanner data from Information Resources Inc. Miller Lite suffered a 9% drop. The big importers were hurt badly too: Corona marketer Crown Imports watched sales decline 6% to 8%, while Heineken and Diageo each saw double-digit drops.

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.